Having turned forty-two, having menstruatedlo these thirty years, most oftenon my hands and knees or curled, druggedand sobbing, around the hot water bottle.Having borne three children and been stretch-markedand bloated beyond recognition. Having pushedthose babies from my womb as each skull crownedlike live coals against my perineumand lodged for good measure up my ass.

Every couple of years, I strip down to my underthings and let my dermatologist and her two assistants check my entire body for skin cancer. I admit I feel weird and a little chilly, being the only nearly naked person in the room, but I have become basically comfortable in my body and benign toward it. I even have the illusion, before the doctor arrives to examine me, that I am still, well, kind of hot. That, though I am clearly a middle-aged woman who has borne three children and nursed for ten years, the possibility exists that someone could find me attractive. (And I mean someone besides Mr. Bell, who has a contractual obligation to fulfill.)

I spend a lot of time lately thinking about appearances. Maybe because, at forty-six, I’m chuffing along on degradation’s slow train, time holding me in its lap and having its way with me. Or maybe it’s because I’m the mother of a teen-aged son. I don’t know if teen-aged boys are more attached to physical manifestations than the rest of us, but I find them unabashed and enthusiastic, brazenly unashamed of their judgments of other people’s bodies.

Francesca Bell | Poet

Francesca Bell is a Poet, translator and poetry editor at River Styx.

Bell’s poems appear in many journals including Blue Lyra Review, B O D Y, burntdistrict, Flycatcher, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Spillway, Tar River Poetry, and Zone 3. She has been nominated eight times for the Pushcart Prize and won the 2014 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor from Rattle. Her translations from Arabic, with Noor Nader Al A'bed, appear in Berkeley Poetry Review, Circumference, and Laghoo.